Research
From documenting harm
to demanding repair
My work follows a deliberate arc: first understanding how discrimination operates within healthcare systems, then learning from how patients resist it, and finally building the frameworks and tools health informatics needs to respond — grounded in patient experience and oriented toward structural accountability.
Dissertation
PhD Dissertation · University of Washington · Expected June 2026
Resistance Informatics: Navigating, Challenging, and Setting a Repair-Centered Agenda for Healthcare Systems
"How do LGBTQ+ and BIPOC patients experience and resist discrimination in healthcare, and what repair-centered agenda does their knowledge generate for health informatics?"
Discrimination in healthcare is not confined to individual clinicians. It is structured into the workflows, documentation practices, and digital infrastructures that define how patients are categorized, represented, and rendered actionable within health systems. This dissertation develops resistance informatics as a framework — treating patient resistance strategies as the foundation for making health informatics accountable to the communities it harms.
"Broken Down by Bias": Healthcare Biases Experienced by BIPOC and LGBTQ+ Patients
Through 25 in-depth interviews with LGBTQ+ and BIPOC patients, this study inductively documented and categorized the types of discrimination patients experience in healthcare encounters — producing a detailed empirical account of how bias operates across clinical interactions, organized into six themes: transactional care, power inequity, communication casualties, bias-embedded medicine, system-level problems, and bigotry in disguise.
"From Harm to Repair": Patient-Centered Strategies for Improving Equitable Clinical Interactions
A secondary analysis of the same 25 interviews surfacing what patients themselves say would begin to repair their relationship with healthcare providers and systems. Patient-generated strategies are organized across individual, interpersonal, and systemic levels — centering patient knowledge as the foundation for institutional change rather than a supplement to clinical expertise.
"Resistance Informatics: A Repair-Centered Agenda for Accountability in Health Information Systems"
A conceptual synthesis of Aims 1 and 2, developing a repair-centered agenda for what health informatics must do differently. Grounded in patient experience, oriented toward acknowledging historical harm, and proposing how health information systems can become sites of accountability rather than harm — with particular attention to how power is encoded in clinical workflows, data standards, and digital health infrastructure.
Other Projects
Current & past research
Beyond the dissertation, my research spans GIS-based environmental health tools, applied global health research, and qualitative work on patient-provider communication.
CLAD Project · UW · 2025–Present
GIS Tools for Environmental Health Screening
UX research on web-based GIS tools for environmental health and environmental justice screening. Leading literature review, IRB development, and qualitative research instrument design in collaboration with teams at University of Iowa, UNC Chapel Hill, and Axle Informatics.
UnBIASED Project · UW · 2019–2024
Patient Experiences of Bias in Healthcare
As lead graduate student researcher, designed and executed 25+ in-depth qualitative interviews with LGBTQ+ and BIPOC patients, coordinated team-based qualitative analysis, and mentored undergraduate and graduate coders. The empirical foundation of the dissertation.
VillageReach · Research Associate · 2023–2025
Applied Health Equity Research
Designed and conducted stakeholder interviews with community leaders, healthcare providers, and program implementers. Analyzed qualitative and quantitative data to generate recommendations addressing health equity challenges across Washington State and global contexts.
Theoretical & Methodological Frameworks
How I approach the work
My research integrates theoretical frameworks from social science with the methodological rigor of health informatics — treating lived experience as empirical evidence and analytic input.
Resistance Informatics
An emerging framework developed through my dissertation: treating patient resistance strategies as the foundation for a repair-centered agenda in health informatics — one that acknowledges historical harm and demands accountability from the systems that perpetuate it.
Intersectionality
I use intersectionality as both an analytic and methodological intervention, examining how systems of privilege and oppression shape data practices, classification, and technological design decisions in healthcare informatics.
Feminist & Queer Theory
Drawing from feminist and queer theory, I interrogate how healthcare systems produce and sustain discrimination, and how technologies can either reinforce or challenge cisheteronormative assumptions embedded in health information systems.
Human-Centered Design
I employ human-centered and participatory research approaches that center patient experience while remaining attentive to system-level constraints and opportunities for structural change.
Community-Based Participatory Research
My methodological approach integrates qualitative interviews, inductive thematic analysis, and collaborative research practices that treat lived experience as empirical evidence rather than anecdote.